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The Impact of Election Polls By Christin Meyer

Election polls give both the voters and the individuals involved with the campaign an inside look as to how things are going. Election polls help predict the outcome to the election. The media uses the polls as a center point in their discussions. With voters voices being heard through the election poll what more could the media want. There are two different types of election polls; benchmark surveys and trail heat surveys. A benchmark survey is used when a candidate is first deciding to enter the race. This survey collects general information on the candidate along with the issues they support and oppose. One flaw to the benchmark survey is the timing. With the survey being done early on in the race the candidate does not know about his or her challenger. As the time goes on and the candidates continue their campaign issues will begin to change as well. Another type of election survey is the trail heat surveys. Trail heat surveys are not surveys but rather a series of questions within a survey. The main purpose of a trail heat survey is to pair competing candidates with each other and ask voters who they plan to vote for. Trail heat surveys can be hypocritical to candidates and change throughout the race like the benchmark survey did. As surveys get conducted tracking the polls is a big task. Tracking polls sometimes occurs on a daily basis and keeps the candidates up to date with the new alterations in the voters choices.

Within the election polls there are many different ways to design the surveys. One way is the cross-sectional survey. In this way of surveying different samples of voters are randomly picked for each round of the interviews. Another way to survey is called a panel survey. In a panel survey, individuals are interviewed three to four different times. This process is a lot more costly than the cross-sectional survey. Focus groups are a big part of the election poll process. Through the focus groups the different types of surveys are conducted. The focus group observes the voters reactions and analysis the results. With the surveys and the focus group a deliberative opinion poll combines the two elements. The deliberative opinion poll brings together a group of people who discuss the candidates issues and extends the polls into a more personal account. There are three main topics the discussion group deliberates: foreign policy, economy, and family concerns.

With all of the different types of polls and focus groups a poll that brings about the most controversial impact is the exiting polls. Exiting polls take place as the voter is finished placing his or her vote. One of the problems with exiting polls is the fact that the voting is not yet over, therefore leaving a gap of time to alter the results. Exit polls are conducted quickly and the voters receive the results very quickly. While exit polls may have a few problems there are also many advantages to them. The three advantages include: exiting polls are asking actual voters, they are collected state by state, and they can be calculated quickly. Through all of the exiting polls and surveys voters are given a predicted outcome far before the final outcome. Journalists take their own spin on the outcomes and create many different opinions on the results. As many newscasts try to eliminate biased reporting when the polls show the voters choice and it does not agree with the networks creating a different spin to the results is the only answer.

In the resent New York City mayor election the polls showed a close call between the two candidates. In the New York Times poll after 99 percent of the votes were counted it showed Michael R. Bloomberg at 51 percent and William C. Thompson Jr. at 46 percent of the votes. That is a very close election call. The election concluded with Mr. Bloomberg winning a third term as the mayor of New York City. This example of election polling proved to have a positive outcome with an accurate conclusion. The margin between Bloomberg and Thompson was not close to what it was predicted to be in the days leading up to the election. New York Times polls predicted an 18 percentage point lead for Bloomberg. Exiting polls were also conducted during the election. The exiting polls discovered that 45 percent of the voters did not vote for Bloomberg because of him pushing the terms limits. Bloomberg is the first New York mayor to hold three terms. Nearly seven out of every ten people approved of his performance during his time in office. With the results of the polls voters are able to see how close the race was. The exiting polls shocked many voters with both of the results to the questions being on opposite sides of the voting scale. In the end of the election the election polls had a great impact on the outcome. A close race like this one is hard to distinguish between responses of the voters.

My experience with election polls happened during my first caucus experience. Herbert Asher explains does an excellent job explaining the caucus process. There are two major reasons as to why caucuses are important for elections. The two reasons include: it is a good way for candidates to find a party’s nomination and caucuses take place in a sequence of states where one states outcome can have a very big impact on the other states. During the last presidential election I attended my first caucus in Dubuque, Iowa. My family is republican so we attended the Republican Party’s caucus. During the caucus we were given the chance to hear each candidate’s representative voice their issues for the upcoming election. Iowa was the first state to hold their caucuses. During this election many of the other states argued that having Iowa as the first state to hold the caucus was biased because of our population. As Asher stated in his book the first states to show their results may have a huge impact on how the other states vote. The Iowa Republican Party caucuses resulted in Huckabee winning. With the results of the overall presidential elections being between John McCain and Barrack Obama the election polls in Iowa were wrong. During the experience there were many media outlets there conducting exiting polls. Being a part of the caucus was a good experience. The caucus gave me a chance to voice my opinion on who should be the next president of the America.